Griffon - Making Swing Fun Again

Agenda A Brief History of Desktop Java Groovy’s Improvements for Swing Grails + Swing -> Griffon Griffon’s Unique Values Q&A / Live Demo

History of Desktop Java Java 1.0 January 1996 AWT Native Peers Subclass to Add Behavior

History of Desktop Java Java 1.1 February 1997 Inner and Anonymous Classes JavaBeans Events Listener Interfaces and Event Objects Properties getters/setters and BeanInfos AWT reworked with JavaBeans Lightweight Peers Swing as an External Library

History of Desktop Java Java 1.3 May 2000 HotSpot JIT JavaSound Java WebStart as External Download

History of Desktop Java Java 1.4 February 2002 Java WebStart Reworked Focus and Drag and Drop JSpinner and JFormattedTextField Java 1.4.2 September 2003 Windows XP Look and Feel GTK+ Look and Feel

History of Desktop Java Java 5.0 September 2004 Synth Look and Feel Ocean Theme for Metal Pack 200 Generics AutoBoxing Annotations Enumerations Varargs

History of Desktop Java Java 6.0 December 2006 SwingWorker API Scripting Language support (JSR-223) Improved Java2D Rendering Pipeline No More Grey Rectangles System Tray and Notifications Support

History of Desktop Java Java 6u10 October 2008 Kernel Installer Nimbus Look and Feel Improved Java Plug-In JNLP Integration New Process Model Patch in Place Updating

History of Desktop Java JavaFX Desktop 1.0 December 2008 New Node Based Graphics Engine Interop APIs for Swing New Programming Language Java Interop on par with JRuby / Jython / Rhino Should You Forget Most of the Last 8 Slides?

Groovy’s Improvements Groovy Addresses Developer Pain Points JavaBeans Events JavaBeans Properties Declarative Structure Groovy Language Features Closures Concise Syntax Meta Object Protocol

Groovy’s Improvements Java Beans Event Listener Java JButton myButton = new JButton("Hello World"); myButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() { public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae) { System.out.println("Hello World"); } }); Groovy JButton myButton = new JButton("Hello World") myButton.actionPerformed = { println "Hello World" }

Groovy’s Improvements Properties Java String field; public String getField() { return field; } public void setField(String field) { this.field = field; } Groovy String field

Groovy’s Improvements Declarative Structure def swing = new SwingBuilder() swing.frame(size:[400, 300], show:true) { borderLayout() scrollPane(constraints:CENTER) { textArea(text: bind { model.script }) } hbox(constraints:SOUTH) { hglue() button("OK", actionPerformed: controller.&okPressed) button("Cancel", actionPerformed: controller.&canceled) } }

Groovy’s Improvements Closures Can be cast to Interfaces Directly Usable for Single Method Interfaces (Runnable et. al.) Concise Syntax Boilerplate Code is Removed Lots of Closure Sensitive Methods Added to Core Classes Meta Object Protocol – i.e. Dynamic Language Allows Any Method to be Called on Any Object Allows Methods to be Intercepted Allows Missing Methods to be Handled Allows Magic to Happen

Grails + Swing -> Griffon Grails Inspired by Rails Groovy as the Language Web as the Domain Java as the Platform Spring Custom Value Added by Framework GORM GSPs

Grails + Swing -> Griffon Griffon Deeply Inspired by Grails Groovy as the Language Desktop/Rich Client as the Domain Java as the Platform Swing Custom Value Added by Framework MVC Groups Packaging

Grails + Swing -> Griffon Differences Fairly Strict Runtime/CLI Separation No Spring at Runtime No J2EE Servlets , EJB, JSP, JMS

Grails + Swing -> Griffon Similarities View Scripts – JSP Pages EDT Event Loop – HTTP Request Loop Source Tree is Partitioned by Role

Griffon’s Unique Values Builders MVC Groups Application Lifecycle Pattern Build Time Packaging

Builders MyBuilder builder = new MyBuilder() builder.parent { child(attr:value, attr2:value, id:'a') favoriteChild(arg) { spoiledGrandchild(inheritance:a) } } bequethKingdom(builder.a) Builders are Groovy Code Nesting Contexts are Closures Nodes are Method Calls Attributes and Arguments are Method Arguments

Builders SwingBuilder One of the Original Builder Samples Re-factored as a FactoryBuilderSupport Builder SwingXBuilder First Builder for a Non-Core Widget Set JideBuilder GraphicsBuilder

Builders UberBuilder Composites Other Builders Intercepts Calls and Dispatches to Approptiate Builder Can Prefix Nodes griffon-app/conf/Builder.groovy – root { 'groovy.swing.SwingBuilder' { controller = ['Threading', 'SupportNodes', 'Binding'] } 'griffon.app.ApplicationBuilder' { view = "*" } } jx { 'groovy.swing.SwingXBuilder' { } }

MVC Groups The MVC Pattern is Great… But Swing Provides a Low Effort to Reward Ratio Lower the Effort Language Level Support for Data Binding Framework Level Support for MVC Triads Increase the Reward Reusability of Triads

MVC Groups – Binding JavaBeans Bound Properties protected PropertyChangeSupport pcs = new PropertyChangeSupport(this) private String myProperty; public String getMyProperty() { return myProperty; } public void setMyProperty(String myProperty) { pcs.firePropertyChange(“myProperty”, this.myProperty, this.myProperty = myProperty); } Groovy Bound Properties @Bindable String myProperty

MVC Groups – View Scripts Views are Groovy Scripts No Class Declarations Looks Like Free-Form Code Compiles to .class Method Contexts are Implied No Required Swing Imports Method Meanings are Provided by the Builder

MVC Groups – Data Injection Methods and Fields are Injected Global Imports createMVCGroup() Method model , view , controller , builder Fields/Properties On a per-builder basis SwingBuilder provides edt , doLater , doOutside Other Builders Can Provide Their Own Methods Injection Controlled by Builder.groovy

Application Lifecycle Follows the JSR-296 Lifecycle stages griffon-app/lifecycle/Initialize.groovy Before Any GUI Work Good Place for Look and Feel Setup griffon-app/lifecycle/Startup.groovy After Startup MVC Groups are Initialized griffon-app/lifecycle/Ready.groovy After the EDT Calms Down griffon-app/lifecycle/Shutdown.groovy After a Shutdown is Successfully Initiated

Packaging How do you… Keep an Applet From Thrashing the Server for BeanInfos? Create a Self-Signed Certificate? Use Pack200 On a Signed Jar? Over 1 MB? Create a Draggable Applet? Write a JNLP file? Switch Between the Applet and Object Tags? When do you Use Applet or Object?

Packaging Griffon Handles Standard Packaging Issues Pack 200 quirks Useful Applet Parameters JNLP Generation Uses Sun Java Deployment Toolkit JavaScripts

Room to Grow Plug-ins (Deeply Inspired by Grails 1.1 plug-ins) Existing Plug-ins swingx-builder – SwingX Components jide-builder – Jide-oss Components fest – Swing GUI Testing easyb – Behavior Driven Testing installer – Packages (deb, dmg, rpm) and IzPack

More Information Web links http://griffon.codehaus.org/ [email_address] Creators' blogs Danno Ferrin http://shemnon.com/speling Andres Almiray http://jroller.com/aalmiray James Williams http://jameswilliams.be/blog

Griffon - Making Swing Fun Again

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Griffon - Making Swing Fun Again